To WiFi users.
Do you reduce your router’s WiFi Transmit Power to the bare minimum as required by you?
- Do you just keep it at the default 100%
- Did you not know you could reduce it (until now)
- Are you not able to control “your” WiFi router because it’s the ISP provided router and they didn’t give you the password?
- Do you actually require the 100% !?
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No but I live in the middle of nowhere.
I lived in an apt building that the only service provider was att, with a required, unique router. Ever person had the same router, and the routers default settings was to blast at full over 2.4ghz with a 40hz spread.
It was completely unusable. Everyone was jamming everyone else.
I bought a router solely so I could turn off 2.4ghz and use only 5ghz.
It was completely unusable. Everyone was jamming everyone else.
The companies deserve all the flak they get in this case. They know it is congested because they are the ones who did it, but don’t care to think about it.
The least they could do is to let the user change the settings, but “oooh nooo PICNIC!”
Ideally they should use a WiFi analyser while setting up the device and if there are too many APs of their own company, send a report to their nearby office so that it can be rectified.Enterprise APs can use their radios to see what channels are full, and make adjustments automatically.
There’s no good reason att couldn’t do this, especially when they have a micro monopoly in a building. It’s just greed and incompetence.
No. the AP will use ATPC to limit itself so why do something manually when it does it automagically.
ATPC
Ahh. Turns out I asked the question 10 years too late.
It’s not like its a well known feature. The only reason I know about it is because I use to be an RF tech.
I looked into my router’s datasheet and all I can say is that it either doesn’t have it or they didn’t care to write it in (home model, nobody cares about details).
Also, the settings interface doesn’t have any reference, neither is the Transmit Power field saying “Max Transmit Power” (which would have lead me to believe that it may reduce the power in certain cases), so I am going to go with “No”, considering how old it is
I’m an electrical engineer and into ham radio. WiFi is the last of my concerns, health-wise.
To even begin to worry about that I should first start eating healthier, work out more than once a week, and so something about all the microplastic in my brain, I guess. I’m not a medical processional, but it’s pretty far down the list. And regarding power consumption… This thing uses like 10 W, of which probably <1 is influenced by the radio power.
I just like keeping it at a minimum, thinking that maybe it would reduce noise for others. Not that it really matters to anyone. Just a “feel good” thing.
Your neighbors probably appreciate it
I’m pretty sure none of my neighbours is techy enough to even know about WiFi Analyser.
Also, it’s not congested enough yet.Maybe if someone were to be making a 2.4 GHz receiver as an amateur project, it would matter.
I just looked at my router, it supports max transmit power settings somewhere deep in the menu, I just leave it at maximum/automatic.
I know from debugging my wifi drivers on my laptop that at least that one does adjust its power, I am guessing it works with most other modern devices as well.
I live in a 10-ish story apartment building and according to my router, channel utilisation is <20% for both 2.4 and 5 GHz. So, I guess it just works.
Do you downvote all of your comments yourself, or do you just leave them at zero and some other guy is downvoting them?
I don’t downvote my comments.
Unless someone proves my comment to be a bad one in a reply and I consider my comment to have been wrong. (That happened once on Reddit)
I remove the upvote so that when I open up my history, I don’t feel weird with everything being blue. <- also, you would probably find my second reason in a previous comment somewhere else
I wonder who downvoted that. I mean, who would disagree with people trying to be considerate?
In jerboa I end up accidentally downvoting comment when I scroll, I imagine it must be people doing the same without even realising.
Maybe someone else griefing because I downvoted some comment of theirs?
Maybe they have Voter ID turned ON, on their server
Fair point
is there any device that can be used to check the router actual transmit power. It feels like changing that setting doesn’t do anything.
Relative power? A phone and an app that shows you the received signal strength. Wifianalyzer on F-droid for example.
For me, setting it from max power to 6% (lowest value) took it from -30dBm on my couch to -50 dBm, so 20 dB difference, which is ca. 1/100. So it roughly checks out.
Keep in mind that radio waves are magic, and the higher in frequency you go, the darker the magic gets.
Absolute power is hard, especially if you are interested in average power for, like, health concerns. WiFi works in short bursts over a pretty large part of the spectrum, and you’d need calibrated equipment as well. I knew a guy who did radio wave strength mapping for like government, telcos and concerned residents, and he had a car full of tech. Simple field probes can be reasonably priced, but you need to know how to operate and interpret them.
I reduced max power, but keep my AP’s set to auto manage up to that max level.
There’s basically a plane of signal that bisects the house where the RSSI of each AP is the same. It intersects with areas where people commonly are on their phones. Depending on humidity, location of people and pets, or even just dumb luck, devices were just bouncing between the AP’s, fishing for whichever had the stronger signal. Dropping the power levels made it so the overlap between the AP’s was less, and adjusting the RSSI at which the AP would hand off clients upward made it so handoffs were less frequent. Small throughput sacrifice in the transition zone, but without the constant bouncing between AP’s (which has no throughput).
I remember someone in the Uni hostel having a similar problem.
All they could do was change the jumpiness in their device. It worked though.
The only devices I’ve ever used that allow that were super high powered Ubiquity devices that could shoot signal several miles away in a straight line that I installed for a WISP. Even my fancy ASUS router doesn’t have any way of lowering the power. 🤨
And the answer is no. Especially when I setup a few Ubiquity Nanos on my own network to shoot my home wifi all across town. I could go down to the city park and still be on wifi. Shit was dope.
You just went over 9000% instead!
fancy ASUS router doesn’t have any way
Maybe it’s just the ATPC, that’s why they thought they didn’t need to add the setting.
Mine is a pretty old, cheap 2.4GHz only model from the days when 5GHz had just entered the market.
You only need to reduce it if it will interfere with another one of your WAPs. In most cases, auto power settings are fine.
Typically you’d reduce it if you had a high density environment with lots of devices (IE office building) because one WAP and network cable can only handle so much traffic, so the WAPs can load balance or have reduced coverage to split the load.
I let the APs auto manage their tx power. Aerohive firmware does a decent job of not running wide open when it doesn’t need to. I also have 1 AP per floor to get adequate coverage.
My cable modem doesn’t have Wi-Fi. I turned it off on my router since it’s in the basement and there’s a dedicated AP down there.
Always love to see others making nice house-wide setups.
The router doesn’t reach everywhere on the default setting.
While you may be able to turn up the transmit power on the router, remember that devices have to be able to transmit back that same distance so you may have mixed results.
Mine are on different, non-overlapping channels, so there’s no need to reduce it.
The bare minimum required by me is past the default my ISP-provided router allowed and I ened up having to do a bunch of extra stuff to get full coverage.
So no.
The famous BO regulatory domain? ;)
So, you needed the 100%
I needed a better router. Unfortunately my provider pretends that isn’t a real thing.
My answer to a crappy ISP router is to turn off its WiFi and plug my own into ethernet.
Yep, that’s where things ended up, more or less.
There are more… aggressive workarounds. And zero reason to ever need them in the first place. ISPs are dumb.
I mounted mine to the outdoor TV antenna mast, added an open SSID and set it to 100%. If I’m covering the entire sports oval next to me I might as well share it.
(And yes, I know how to isolate the subnet)
Sha-ring is Ca-ring
No.
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It’s already a bit too short to reach the sofa in the living room.
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Even if it did, why? If my neighbors did the congestion would possibly decrease. They don’t know how and if I touch their stuff I’m doomed to be their perpetual tech support.
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Never thought about it. If we did that, we’d probably lose connectivity since we have massive concrete walls.
The house I live in is all brick walls and my 12-year-old phone (Sony Xperia Z) has connectivity issues just 5 m and one wall away, RSSI of -70 dBm and below unless in specific places and orientations. Radios have improved quite a bit since.
I’m in bed on the outer edge of our flat right now, meaning there are two walls and maybe 4-5 m between my phone and the router. If I turn the wrong way I lose signal on my 4 year old phone. 🤷
(Which reminds me to get up)
I did not know I could reduce it lol
Well, now you do!
I’ll consider myself having done a good deed today :P
